The Trump administration recently announced plans to withdraw federal funding from five Northern Virginia school districts that refuse to change policies that allow biological males to use girls’ bathrooms. Much attention has been given to activists who have protested the announcement, but that tells the story from only one perspective.

Missing in the loudest narratives are the voices of parents kept in the dark when school officials secretly transitioned their children, depriving these kids of counsel from those who love them most.

Missing are the stories of vulnerable girls forced to share locker rooms with biological males.

Missing are the testimonies of anguished young adults who say they were rushed into life-altering decisions they now regret.

These people, too, are worthy of compassion, protection and care.

Schools shut parents out of critical decision-making for their kids

Yet, across the country, schools have adopted policies allowing children to “socially transition,” often with new names and pronouns, without informing their parents.

Activist administrators and educators use these policies to insert themselves between parent and child, positioning themselves as the authority on a major issue affecting the child’s mental and physical health.

The stated rationale is to keep students “safe” from parents who might not agree with their self-identification. These policies cast mothers and fathers as a threat and give schools license to transition children in secret.

When this ideology permeates bathrooms, locker rooms and other intimate spaces, the victims are most often girls.

In Loudoun County, Virginia – one of the counties defying the Trump administration over its bathroom policies – a teenage male student was found guilty of assaulting two female students at two different high schools over six months in 2021. In one of the assaults, the attacker was wearing a skirt in the girls' bathroom.

Shockingly, about the time of these assaults, Loudoun County schools adopted the controversial Policy 8040, which allows students to use bathrooms or locker rooms based on their gender identity rather than biological sex.

The student perpetrator, now 18, has since been released from a juvenile treatment center and will have no public conviction on his record. Where was the compassion for the victims?

And it’s not just schools. The YMCA ‒ where thousands of children take swim lessons, attend summer camps and participate in afterschool programs − has offered guidance to its branches promoting bathroom, locker room and overnight cabin access based on gender identity rather than biological sex. Parents may never be told their daughter is sharing an intimate space with a biological male until they hear it from their child.

In 2023, a biological male identifying as a woman was found not guilty of public indecency in the women’s locker room at a YMCA of Greater Dayton in Ohio. Supporters of the accused claimed the case merely “increased hate and increased discrimination and suppressed love and care and acceptance.”

No such support was offered for the women and girls whose privacy was violated, and the YMCA still defends its policy.

Research shows risk of transgender care

Gender activists often argue that policies supporting the transition of minors is “grounded in decades of research,” but the evidence says otherwise.

A major study, published in May by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found “a growing body of evidence pointing to significant risks − including irreversible harms such as infertility − while finding very weak evidence of benefit.”

The absence of benefit, the study noted, “has been a consistent finding of systematic reviews of evidence around the world.”

Several European countries, including Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom, have rolled back medical interventions for children after reviewing similar findings. These countries were once the pioneers in this field but are now walking back their guidance, while many entities in the United States – including the American Academy of Pediatrics – are doubling down.

Emotional pleas in support of irreversible changes to a child’s biology, and the policies facilitating this process, appear well-meaning. But they lack the compassion they claim is at the heart of their arguments.

It is not compassionate to ignore biological reality and dismantle safeguards meant to protect safety and privacy. It is also not compassionate to subvert the parents whose job it is to safely steward their children into adulthood.

Policies affecting the health and well-being of all children should be rooted in truth, safety and sound judgment. That means helping kids navigate gender discomfort without rushing them into irreversible medical interventions and preserving boundaries that keep private spaces private.

True compassion protects children from decisions they cannot fully understand, empowers parents to make informed decisions based in sound evidence and safeguards every child who shares a school, a sports team or a locker room.

Parents deserve transparency about the policies that affect their children and the risks they carry. We cannot sacrifice the well-being of our children on the altar of gender ideology.

Alleigh Marré is executive director of the American Parents Coalition.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Schools shut out parents on trans policies that harm our kids. We must be heard. | Opinion

Reporting by Alleigh Marre / USA TODAY

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